My thoughts turn today to the meaning of Jesus and I want to share my view. I hope you will share yours in the comments below. I hope to begin a thoughtful ecumenical Christmas Eve discussion in which we all share our ideas, regardless of religious belief, doubt or non belief.

All are welcome in the house tonight.

Faith matters not to me. I do not know or care whether he existed in physical form or is just a story someone dreamed up. I don’t believe in magical virgin births or raising the dead and I could care less if he walked on water. I also reject the idea that someone 2,000 years ago died for my sins. I regard the story of the resurrection to be symbolic rather than literal.

I aspire to think and act as he would think and act. In the words of Rabbi Hillel, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

The positive form of the idea is expressed in Matthew 7:12 NCV, “Do to others what you want them to do to you. This is the meaning of the law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets.”

It’s all about the works, not the faith.

I chose long ago to represent the poor, the marginalized and the mentally ill. To give voice to those who had no voice. To save the lives of those whom the government would kill. And I found that every person, no matter what horrors they had visited upon others, possessed a core of decency and grace.

I didn’t do it to earn salvation and eternal life in some heaven somewhere and I didn’t do it to avoid eternal fire.

I chose to live this way, regardless of the consequences, because it is the right way to live. If we all lived this way, we would realize the fabled Garden of Eden. It’s there in your heart.

Although I stumble a lot, I pick myself up, return my eye to that distant star and take another step.

No matter what happens, there is no other path for me to follow.

Love is the most powerful transforming force in the universe. It is here in this house. Feel it. Believe it and live it.

Like this:

(h/t to Crane-Station for recommending this short film by Joshua Weigel, who also directed the Butterfly Circus)

I remember reading about a person who voluntarily decided to experience visual blindness for 30 days. He cut a ping-pong ball in half, manufactured a pair of goggles, and wore them for the entire month.

That gave me an idea.

Why not do the same for a set of beliefs and witness how your personality and behavior change?

For example, I decided to assume that my spirit is immortal and voluntarily experiencing a finite existence in the physical dimension of space-time by inhabiting a form that consists of a physical body that comes with a mind and ego/personality.

I intentionally disconnected my sense of self from my mind and ego/personality and attached it to my spirit/soul.

The shadow is that part of the internal world of our consciousness we seek to hide from ourselves and others by pretending that it does not exist.

When we do that, it confronts us in the external world that we call reality.

This happens via projection of our internal consciousness as if onto a mirror, which is what we experience as our external reality.

Wetiko is a Native American word for something difficult to describe, a non-local mind parasite, or aspect of consciousness that not only imagines itself to be sighted, but imagines itself to be able to see better than anyone else. No one is immune and everyone has it.

Wetigo lives in the shadow and manifests in each person in an individual way.

Wetiko seizes you when you least expect it and when you have it, you do not recognize it as it slowly eats and kills your soul much like a tapeworm consumes vitality and eventually kills its host.

Look a Barack Obama. To you, as he is to each of us, he is a projection of what we hate about ourselves and fear to confront.

He is what he is and refuses to listen, but do not demonize and condemn him or Wetigo will just as surely consume you.

Enlightenment consists of becoming conscious of the shadow within by illuminating and observing it objectively from a detached perspective. Study it closely, my friend, and know its soft and barely whispered touch.

Wetigo is your addiction and conceals itself in your shadow like a cockroach.

Wetigo will consume your immortal soul, if you let it.

You cannot kill it without killing yourself, but you can speak its name and disempower it.

Use love and compassion to keep it at bay.

Illuminate your way to enlightenment by neutralizing Wetigo.

This is how you will transform the world, which is but a projection of your dream.